What are some keyboards you had high expectations but were thoroughly disappointed?

Here are some of mine:

1) The Roland D70. I first saw it on the showroom floor I was stoked. I expected a possibly improved D-50 with 76 keys and more polyphony. It didn't sound anything like the D-50. It sucked. It was mediocre rompler. I liked my Casios better than that thing. Maybe my expectations were just too high.

2) Korg DS-8. This came out about the same time as the D-50. It was an FM synth. I think Yamaha had bought Korg and loaned them DX FM technology. At the time I was a Casio synth player. I seemed like I was the only one. Keyboardist in the Silver Bullet band played a CZ-5000. I had a CZ-1000 (same as a CZ-101 with full size keys) and in 86 or so I got the CZ-1. At the time I played a TX-7 and had some programming software but I couldn't get the hang of programming FM. I bought a bunch of patches on cassette tape. I liked the Casio because it sounded a lot like FM but the architecture was laid out like a normal synth and I could program the CZs. This was what I wanted out of the DS-8. An Actually FM synth that was laid out like typical synth architecture. The keyboard was terrible. The action was terrible. The key travel was funny. The DW8000 was 10 times the synth the DS-8 was. It flopped. Korg only made it the one year.

_________________________
"It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne

"A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!!So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt

I also got sucked in on the D70. I liked the D50 sound so I figured this had to be even better. I had a connection at Roland and got it before it was in the stores without playing it first. It sounded nothing like a D50 and I couldn't see any other reason to keep it. I sold it the next week and got all my money back.

Yamaha V50. I was so excited for the next step up in fm synthesis only to be let down by less operators (4) and continued 16 voice polyphony. I remember hearing about it from someone at Goodman Music right before its official announcement. For weeks every time I passed by the Yamaha building (I lived close by) I' d practically start salivating.

Yamaha DX7 that clangorous FM sound never appealed to me, and the 2 or 3 patches that did sound OK were overused to death. Want to tweak the patches so they don't suck? Not with that user hostile interface.

M Audio Venom. After all the hype about it, I expected it to be a pretty cool, inexpensive synth. I played one for about 2 or 3 minutes and lost interest. It just sounded like nails on a chalkboard to me.

Yamaha DX7 that clangorous FM sound never appealed to me, and the 2 or 3 patches that did sound OK were overused to death. Want to tweak the patches so they don't suck? Not with that user hostile interface.

Yamaha DX7 that clangorous FM sound never appealed to me, and the 2 or 3 patches that did sound OK were overused to death. Want to tweak the patches so they don't suck? Not with that user hostile interface.

Even today I cringe when I hear a song with a clangorous FM sound.

Nice keyboard action though.

In the late 80's I bought my Matrix 12 from a guy who was selling it so he could buy a DX7.

M Audio Venom. After all the hype about it, I expected it to be a pretty cool, inexpensive synth. I played one for about 2 or 3 minutes and lost interest. It just sounded like nails on a chalkboard to me.

+1. I bought one at steep discount and still overpaid. A true waste of money purchase.

Not because it wasn't great, but because it cost $10,000!!!(Yeah, you could probably wheel and deal it to $8500, doesn't matter)

I was all excited waiting for one to come into the music store. One finally did, and after playing on it, I boldly went to the sales guy and asked "how much it this one" He told me, and I pretended to be all cool and thinking about wether to buy it or not, plunking around on it and stuff. When in my mind I was going wtf, who can afford this thing?

Yamaha DX7 that clangorous FM sound never appealed to me, and the 2 or 3 patches that did sound OK were overused to death. Want to tweak the patches so they don't suck? Not with that user hostile interface.

Yamaha DX7 that clangorous FM sound never appealed to me, and the 2 or 3 patches that did sound OK were overused to death. Want to tweak the patches so they don't suck? Not with that user hostile interface.

Sorry, but my Tyros 4 volume sliders are the worst ever in my experience. No keyboard has had such poor responses.

And no serious edits of the decay.. the basses are nearly impossible if not impossible to taper off properly..

Using it in a way it was not designed for. just a digital ac piano, is not a fun experience.

And some may differ, but Yamaha architecture is baffling to me... it was not designed for on the fly adjustments, but Man let me tell you, on the fly voice changes are a drag, as the reverb settings in ROM FOLLOW the damned thing when you want to make a change mid song. I have a "love hate " with Tyros4.

Edited by I-missRichardTee (09/11/1703:56 PM)

_________________________
Either there is or is not a high purpose for Life.

This one will really date me. When I was about 15 years old, circa 1971, I used to hang out at the store that sold Hammond Organs. They would let me play a B-3 for a few minutes. I could hardly afford bus fare, let alone a B-3. Anyways, I figured that Hammond would come out with a synthesizer to compete with the Minimoog. Hammond should have known the pro market, and I expected them to come up with a synth that kicked ass.

Well, they finally did come up with one, geared for the home organist market. I remember major disappointment playing the thing when it came out. This article claims only 200 were made:

The Prophet 600 could be in the discussion, but I owned one and loved it. At that time the 5 was out of my price range. My 600 had tuning issues, memory, reboots. I really can't remember, except it was a love/hate relationship. I had fun creating sounds and since I never owned a Mini, I was able to get some cool leads and finally had real wheels.

Not that the Yamaha refaces sound bad or aren't built well or aren't fun... But I know a lot of us imagined something revolutionary if not evolutionary... And then these collectables arrived instead. Thankfully the Montage fulfilled the synth desires of a lot of us with its FS1R inspired FM-X (not to mention a big jump in AWM2 content over previous Motifs). YMMV. I'm hopeful the revision of the CP4 brings over a little Montage goodness.

On other fronts... Poor Alesis already named in this thread... And not that the Fusion wasn't more than we ever imagined would come out of an Alesis workstation. But the firmware/OS issues were frustrating for those that jumped in. Thankfully they also developed the Andromeda which was in production for nearly 10 years and was inspiring with its analog VCOs, Filters and FX at a time when digitals were all the rage. Maybe Alesis well reissue or release a successor. We can dream.

Moog Voyager. I expected it to be a replacement for a Minimoog D; I spent over a decade trying to convince myself I liked it, but was glad I sold it. The real Minimoog D reissue fulfilled my dreams....

Yamaha DX7 that clangorous FM sound never appealed to me, and the 2 or 3 patches that did sound OK were overused to death. Want to tweak the patches so they don't suck? Not with that user hostile interface.

It's easy to say this looking back. I remember being very impressed with the DX7 when it debuted. Back then it was Oberheims, Prophet 5s, Moogs – subtractive synths all. FM was a new world and many of those sounds, as dated and clangorous as they sound to us today, were unattainable with the typical synth of that era. Yea a lot of the DX sounds got old quickly since pretty much the entire world jumped on FM until it was supplanted by romplers.

My candidate for the most disappointing keyboard would be the Ensoniq Mirage. This is not to take away from what Ensoniq achieved, they hit a price point that was around 5x less than the next competitor (Emulator 2 at that time IIRC). I had fooled around with a Kurz 250 (I was a hired programmer for the guy that bought one of the first units), and so when I saw the ad for the Mirage that said I could get "the sound of a thunderclap" (or something like that), I bought into the hype and ordered it before it was released. When I got it back to my loft and loaded up that 8-bit piano that was crammed into 256K of memory, it was quite the letdown. It still served me well doing strings on a few Liza Minnelli tours so overall I grew to appreciate its quirks. It sits in storage at the moment. Someday I'll make it a sculpture!

What are some keyboards you had high expectations but were thoroughly disappointed?

Here are some of mine:

1) The Roland D70. I first saw it on the showroom floor I was stoked. I expected a possibly improved D-50 with 76 keys and more polyphony. It didn't sound anything like the D-50. It sucked. It was mediocre rompler. I liked my Casios better than that thing. Maybe my expectations were just too high.

2) Korg DS-8. This came out about the same time as the D-50. It was an FM synth. I think Yamaha had bought Korg and loaned them DX FM technology. At the time I was a Casio synth player. I seemed like I was the only one. Keyboardist in the Silver Bullet band played a CZ-5000. I had a CZ-1000 (same as a CZ-101 with full size keys) and in 86 or so I got the CZ-1. At the time I played a TX-7 and had some programming software but I couldn't get the hang of programming FM. I bought a bunch of patches on cassette tape. I liked the Casio because it sounded a lot like FM but the architecture was laid out like a normal synth and I could program the CZs. This was what I wanted out of the DS-8. An Actually FM synth that was laid out like typical synth architecture. The keyboard was terrible. The action was terrible. The key travel was funny. The DW8000 was 10 times the synth the DS-8 was. It flopped. Korg only made it the one year.

I SO wanted a D-70. At the end of the day, I ended up getting the newly released JV-30. Probably the better choice although it was only 61 keys and built kind of cheaply.

At the same time I also had a CZ-101....surprisingly cool for a little mini-key casio. I later also got the VZ-8M which was a bit more powerful with a similar synth engine. Always wanted a CZ-5000....may still be tempted to get one some day off ebay.

The Alesis Fusion......initially extremely disappointing because when I got it, it still had a lot of bugs and I had to get up to speed for a new band in just a few weeks. I eventually ended up loving it after some software updates and learning some workarounds for some of it's quirks. I still prefer it's sampling, memory management and file handling to anything else on the market, and it had a decent VA engine. Plus the price was right. So call it a love/hate relationship.

Mojo for me. It just got lost in the mix. Problems with it in the way it was made. Had to send it back twice I expected more but from people drinking all the Koolaid about it I went for it. Went back to Hammond.

Old: Sequential Six-Trax. Very thin, bad sound due to poorly implemented DCO and no effects. Used mine for sound effects only.

New: Yamaha Montage. Made to stand alone rather than integrate with a professional setup. In addition, patches were washed in way too much reverb to be usable on stage without drying them out. It is a shame that a synth with such a great sound was so poorly implemented. It is like Yamaha is trying to be like Apple and tell customers what they need rather than listen to their needs.

New: Yamaha Montage. Made to stand alone rather than integrate with a professional setup. In addition, patches were washed in way too much reverb to be usable on stage without drying them out. It is a shame that a synth with such a great sound was so poorly implemented. It is like Yamaha is trying to be like Apple and tell customers what they need rather than listen to their needs.

+1.

And the Nord Stage 3 is headed the same way unless they fix the MIDI routing limitations they introduced.